Mourners Face Lack Of Respect On Burial Route

WASHINGTON — The funeral procession was modest but hard to miss as it made the final journey to a cemetery in suburban Fairfax County, Va.: a hearse trailed by about 20 cars with headlights burning.

But other motorists would not allow death to take its turn. They darted in and out of the cortege, honking, even cursing. One driver grew so furious that he raced along the shoulder and swerved in front.

"People were flipping us off because they couldn't get in," recalled Deborah T. Nuckolls, who attended the recent funeral for a friend.

Road rage has come to this. Amid the hectic lives of many Washingtonians, there is no longer time for death.

Once, motorists would pull aside and permit funeral corteges to pass. Now, drivers regularly cut them off at intersections rather than allow them to continue through red lights, and weave in and out of processions instead of pausing, say funeral directors and police. The actions are often accompanied by honking, cursing and vile gestures.

"How you treat your dead says something about how civilized you are. The traditions of the past have been lost, and clearly the respect that should be extended to funeral processions is no longer there," said C. Michael Terry, manager of the local Marshall's Funeral Homes.

This change has occurred in the last five to 10 years, say funeral directors and police. Hearses and headlights, funeral flags and placards, even police escorts often make little difference.

Nor is this bad behavior limited to the Washington region, said Kelly Smith, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association.

"There's no question that there's a difference in the larger metropolitan areas. In rural areas, you still see some of the same degree of respect," he said.

Some of it may be due more to distraction than disrespect: Traffic has increased dramatically, making it easier to inadvertently cut into a cortege. More cars have daytime headlights that make it harder to distinguish vehicles in a cortege. And motorists are confused about the laws governing funerals.

But there's no doubt society has also changed.

"It's the faster pace. It's the `me' society," said Reginald Noe, of Pearson Funeral Home in suburban Falls Church, Va., who finds that drivers regularly cut off his hearse and make obscene gestures. "I think processions should be eliminated for the amount of problems we have and the lack of respect for the deceased."

The Rev. Mike Tune learned this frightening lesson last year as soon as he arrived at the Church of Christ in Falls Church from Nashville. At his first funeral, a car tried to dash across the road, nearly striking his car.

"It is worse here. There's a lack of civility, and people are selfish and determined to have their way when they want it," Tune said.

Bernadette R. Smith said she and fellow mourners were appalled at the motorists dodging in and out of a recent procession to suburban Maryland, paying no mind to orange funeral signs hanging from the rearview mirrors.

"It was chaos," Smith said. "The Washington area just doesn't have any respect for the dead, or any respect for the living, either."

A mortician in Clinton, Md., tells of a procession several summers ago in which a young man, apparently in beach attire, joined a cortege so he could proceed unhindered through red lights. A police officer spotted him and pulled him over, then ordered him to follow mourners all the way to the grave site.

With that type of enforcement, police say, they could preserve the historic dignity of funerals. But police are stretched thin, and escorts are increasingly uncommon.

This week, Officer Mike Nicholson, of the Fairfax motorcycle squad, escorted about 150 cars in a funeral procession for a 15-year-old girl who died in a car crash. As he held traffic at an intersection, an impatient driver with a clear view of the cortege kept blaring his horn.

"That's the kind of thing we see on a daily basis," Nicholson said.

Dorothy Vitrano, of Columbia, Md., said she and her sister battled agitated motorists all the way to a Towson, Md., cemetery last spring for her grandmother's burial.

"It's the last time she was above ground, and they can't wait," Vitrano said. "It really added to our grief."

But nothing was as bad as when a carload of teenagers, honking and shouting angrily, tried to cut through the procession, she said. Vitrano called out the window, "Our grandmother just died."